August 10, 2005

Ban Interstate Traffic In Nonhuman Primates

by hilzoy

If you're like me (oh, stop laughing) (and stop sighing with relief, too), you sometimes find yourself thinking: Gee, there must be a bunch of really good bills in Congress, bills that (if passed) would really do some good, but which are doomed to fail because the problem they address isn't at the top of anyone's priority list. Wouldn't it be nice if someone would tell me about them, so that I could support them? And wouldn't it be nice to support something that wasn't at the center of a political fight, too? Luckily, I have found such a worthy bill, so I'm going to take advantage of my position of awesome media power and ask both of the the millions of readers who hang on my every word to support it. (If any other bloggers want to use their awesome linking powers to help, feel free. This one might die of neglect.)

H.R. 1329 and S. 1509, both known as 'The Captive Primate Safety Act', would make it illegal to transport primates across state lines to be kept as pets. (More exactly: it would add non-human primates to a list of "prohibited wildlife species" which it is illegal to "import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce", except under certain circumstances that don't include pet ownership. Click the link and look for subsection e if you're curious.) This is a very, very good idea, on several counts.

First, unlike dogs and cats, who have had thousands of years to adapt to us, nonhuman primates have the psyches they need to survive in a jungle or on a savannah, not in a human home. Most people buy them when they are cutelittlebabies. (Wrong in itself: they are infants who would normally stay with their mothers for several years.) At this point, like infants of most (mammalian) species, they are quite tractable and submissive. However, this (predictably) doesn't last. When they hit puberty, many of them become aggressive, and try to start dominance fights with members of what they think of as their pack, but you think of as your household. Sometimes they start with what they think of as the weakest members, but you think of as your children. Since most apes and monkeys are very strong, and have vicious bites, this is not pleasant. (Another thing that's not necessary in the wild: attention to where one pees. When you're up in the trees, you don't need to care about that, so most nonhuman primates don't. Consider the implications for a monkey-owner's carpeting, furniture, etc. Consider the fact that almost every animal gets diarrhea sometimes. Yuck. Etc., etc.)

Second, they are agile, athletic, clever, inquisitive, and have opposable thumbs. As someone who has owned cats and dogs, I have often thanked the God I don't believe in that they had neither the intelligence nor the opposable thumbs required to do things like open cupboards and turn doorknobs. Monkeys do. And they love to tear things apart for fun -- the contents of your pantry, your tax files, books, whatever. Here's an excerpt from an article that's generally supportive of nonhuman primate pet ownership, but only when the owners know what they're getting into:

"Growing monkeys may pull down drapes, shred cloth, chew wood, spill drinks, steal food, take possession of articles and refuse to return them, damage house plants, torment other household pets, soil or stain furniture, tip chairs, break knickknacks, ink pens or dishes, tear books and papers, get into cleaning fluids or baking ingredients, open drawers, cabinets, unlock or open inside and outside house doors, open refrigerators and windows, remove window screens, open baby proof latches and lids, break glass, push large pieces of furniture over, urinate into television sets or other electronic equipment ect. Monkeys are escape artists and may unfasten their belts, their leashes, wiggle the bolts from their kennel carriers, find ways to escape cages or other housing. Such behaviors are not only damaging to your home and property but can be dangerous to the monkey as well."

Third, they are not very trainable. Lots of people confuse intelligence with tractability, but the two are very different. Apes and monkeys are smart, but not tractable, except when they are young. Most of the chimps you see on TV are (in chimp terms) young children; by the time they get anywhere near adolescence, they are generally unusable as performers, since (understandably) they are more concerned with things like establishing dominance over other primates than with pleasing us.

For these reasons, nonhuman primates make really, really bad pets. They are destructive and at times vicious, and, as I said, they bite hard. As a result, most people who own them end up keeping them in cages. This is really dreadful for very intelligent, very social, emotionally complicated animals. And it's even worse when you consider that nonhuman primates tend to live from fifteen to thirty years; chimps in captivity live until around sixty. That's a very long time to be in prison.

Besides that, they are also a public health hazard. As I said earlier, monkeys bite. From the article cited earlier:

"It is not reasonable to expect that you will never be bitten by any monkey. The relatively docile youngster eventually turns from play-aggression to the serious aggression of an adult. Proper management techniques go a long ways in coping. The larger the monkey, generally speaking, the bigger the problem. Yet it is hard to prepare someone for the onslaught of mature aggression in a monkey. Have you ever seen a rabid dog in the throes of an attack--the pursuit of an angry bull in a bull ring, the vicious ripping power of a lion's canine teeth? A mature monkey, even one who was hand-raised, can attack a friend or stranger with equal vengeance. An angry monkey has the cunning and dexterity to leap into the air and accurately take a swipe an the human eye, or to bite the human body in the most vulnerable places, the jugular vein, the veins of the wrists, the nerve-filled fingers of the hand. It almost takes the discipline of a professional trainer to deal with the personalities of some individual monkeys in a constructive way as they mature."

This is a danger to members of one's household, and to anyone the primate encounters when he or she escapes, since biting is one of their normal reactions to stress. (And they are very good at escaping. Here's a partial list of press reports of escapes.) But besides the bite itself, monkeys and apes also carry diseases. Since they are a lot more like us than cats or dogs are, they are susceptible to many more human diseases, and we are susceptible to more of theirs. Here is an article on all the diseases one can get from nonhuman primates, including ebola, Marburg, monkeypox, viral hepatitis and all sorts of delightful things. One that's particularly worth noting is Herpes B, which is widespread in many species of macaques. They tend to be asymptomatic, but when humans get Herpes B, they usually die. (And ask yourself this: how would a human doctor even know to look for a disease normally found only in macaques?)

So, to summarize: owning nonhuman primates as pets is bad for the owner, really bad for the primate, and bad for public health. Bad, bad, bad. And what do you do with your pet primate once you've decided you don't want to care for him or her any more? If you're lucky, you can find a sanctuary that takes them in, but there are very few of these, and they are generally full. (Here's the story of a snow monkey who did find a place at a sanctuary.) You certainly can't reintroduce them into the wild, any more than you could drop a human child into an African savannah and expect good results. Nonhuman primates, like humans, learn a lot from their parents, and when you bring one up as a sort of peculiar and hairy human child, you do not put it in a good position to survive in the wild. Most often, people either keep them in cages for the duration, abandon them, or euthanize them. All told, it's a sad, asd story.

Despite this, you can buythemontheinternet, or drive off to various hateful "exotic pet dealers" and purchase them. H.R. 1329 and S. 1509 would make it illegal to "import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce" non-human primates as pets. This would be a very, very, very good thing, according to me.

If you agree, just click here: it's a page about this issue from the Animal Protection Institute, and contains links to lists of sponsors and co-sponsors of the bills, so that you can thank your Senators and Representatives if they have sponsored them or, more likely, urge them to; and also links to the House and Senate pages, where you can find the names and email addresses of your Senators and Representatives. Or just write them on your own, and tell them that you support this bill, and why. If you feel really inspired (hey, a girl can dream), here's the link for their entire "exotic pet campaign", aimed at banning not just private ownership of nonhuman primates but of other wild animals as well. That page has a lot of useful links, including a list of state laws; it turns out that it's perfectly legal for me, in Maryland, to buy an elephant, a gorilla, or a rhinoceros. And that's just crazy.

Comments

"may pull down drapes, shred cloth, chew wood, spill drinks, steal food, take possession of articles and refuse to return them, damage house plants, torment other household pets, soil or stain furniture, tip chairs, break knickknacks, ink pens or dishes, tear books and papers, get into cleaning fluids or baking ingredients, open drawers, cabinets, unlock or open inside and outside house doors, open refrigerators and windows, remove window screens, open baby proof latches and lids, break glass, push large pieces of furniture over, urinate into television sets or other electronic equipment etc."

But for the Herpes B, sounds an awful lot like my high school prom date. Course she tried to explain away her having "urinated into the television set" with the fact that she couldn't find the proper mixer to go with her tequila, rum and vodka cocktails.

by the way, hilzoy, as a charter member of this club, might i say we are (all of us) in awe of, nay, staggered by, the number of seemingly random and disparate topics you manage to come up with each and every week about which to be so earnest.

(aren't you at least a little charmed by the fact that, were you inclined to do so, you could legally buy a baby rhino at the corner mart in Balmer?)

I seem to remember having read recently about a chimpanzee (or ape, I can't recall) that attacked and killed its owner, chewing off all his fingers. And then there's Moe the chimp (no relation to our beloved founder-in-self-induced-exile), who tore a goodly portion of his owner's face off, and badly bit him in the naughty bits. I guess both these could be the same story, but I thought I recall that someone was killed.

I've worked with animals, and have always thought of myself The Compleat Animal Lover, Aardvarks to Zebras edition.

Until I volunteered to help care for some macaques. They were privately owned, and pretty much regarded as surrogate children by their owners/handlers, a married couple who had many years experience doing "animal outreach." They knew how to handle these guys; I didn't; and they didn't know how to teach me.

The macaques were both male, both young - one was 2 years old, the other 5 or so. They weren't very well socialized, and I didn't know how to discipline them properly. Apparently, when one bit me, I was supposed to either bite him back, or somehow gently get him down on his back on the ground and loom over him, baring my teeth at him and acting scary-dominant. Problem was, he would attack me when I was trying to (or thought I was trying to) help him; I was never prepared, and have a lot of trouble anyway with the idea of hurting an animal.

Plus, they were both so fast, their moods turned on a dime, and they had no inhibitions whatsoever about doing whatever they took it into their heads to do. One of them damn near took my ear off; the other damn near bit through my knee.

I lasted 2 weeks. Would've been one week, but I refused to acknowledge how much they scared me, and how much I disliked them.

And they were just macaques, not-very-large monkeys!

I'm ambivalent about private ownership of wild animals. As a rule, it's unfair (at best) to the animals and just plain crazy on the part of the owners. Private refuges and preserves are okay - if, and only if, they're truly run for the animals' benefit, by people who know what they're doing. There are a number of these I like very much; such as Wolf Haven here in Washington, Cleveland Amory's refuge, and the one for retired actor/lab apes that the NYT Magazine just had a story about.

The private refuges and preserves are necessary, actually. All those wild animal actors, lab survivors, and cast-offs from moronic private owners should have some safe, idyllic place to go. It's the very least we can do for them.

I direct most of my random acts of kindness toward animals and make monthly donations to several refuges and animal rights groups. It absolutely sickens me that people can sell lions, tigers, cougars, bears, elephants and other completely inappropriate animals to private buyers. Some of them end up being killed at canned hunting ranches, many end up in lives of abject misery in cages too small, lonely and demented. Tiger Haven and other refuges do a wonderful job of providing decent living spaces for some of the lucky ones. Thank you Hilzoy for this post.

First, unlike dogs and cats, who have had thousands of years to adapt to us, nonhuman primates have the psyches they need to survive in a jungle or on a savannah, not in a human home

Unconvincing as applied specifically to primates. This applies to most other wild mammals as well as snakes, spiders, etc. Unless you are making a blanket statement that only those animals that have ever been domesticated should be kept as pets, this carries little weight.

Second, they are agile, athletic, clever, inquisitive, and have opposable thumbs.

I fail to see how the fact that some pets make bigger messes than others dictates that we should take away the freedom of people to make a bad choice. Shall we restrict humans from deciding to have children when we are not certain they know what they are getting into?

Third, they are not very trainable

A hundred bucks says I can teach a monkey to fetch more quickly than you can teach a cat. At least the cats I'm familiar with.

As a result, most people who own them end up keeping them in cages. This is really dreadful for very intelligent, very social, emotionally complicated animals

If it could be shown that a species of pig were more intelligent than a species of primate, would you be more likely to decide it was ok to keep the primate as a pet or that we should outlaw eating pork instead? I don't accept that intelligent animals deserve better treatment than others. Would you apply the same standard to humans? Is it less immoral to wrongly imprison a mentally handicapped person than a genius?

I think there is a good case to be made that taking a wild animal - smart one or dumb one, very social or very antisocial, emotionally complicated or not - and keeping that animal in a cage away from its habitat is an immoral act in the absence of overriding necessity. For example in the case of an animal who is in danger of extinction. But most of your justifications that single out primates raise more questions than they answer.

Felix: the bill singles out primates, not me. I am generally opposed to keeping wild animals (= animals w/o a history of being domesticated) as pets, and what 'generally' means here is that I don't know enough about all the animal species in the world, and so leave open, in principle, the possibility that members of some species might be just fine as pets. But I'd need to be convinced.

I oppose the freedom of people to make the bad choice of owning a nonhuman primate because it brings needless suffering to the animal, poses a public health hazard, and is usually not in the best interests of the owner.

It's not victimless, as many stupid choices are. And the decision to have kids doesn't pose a public health problem, constitutes a fundamental right (which I take it you wouldn't argue owning non-human primates does), and is also a lot less predictably dumb. Nor is it easy to tell which parents will be dreadful parents in any obvious way, let alone a way I'd be inclined to entrust to the government.

Felix: Another point at which you attribute something to me that I just did not say is this:

"I don't accept that intelligent animals deserve better treatment than others. Would you apply the same standard to humans? Is it less immoral to wrongly imprison a mentally handicapped person than a genius?"

As you note, what I said was:

"This is really dreadful for very intelligent, very social, emotionally complicated animals"

I did not say that it was not dreadful, or even less dreadful, for other sorts of animals. I wasn't discussing other sorts of animals at all, since (as I noted) the bill only concerns primates, and so I did not say anything about the morality of keeping them in cages.

Moreover, suppose I had said that it was worse to keep intelligent, social, emotionally complicated animals in cages than to keep unintelligent, solitary, emotionally uncomplicated ones in cages. This would not imply that it was OK to keep them there at all. One might argue that it's worse to steal money from a poor person than from a rich one, on the grounds of decreasing marginal utility; or that it's worse to kill a twenty year old than a ninety year old, on the grounds that at least the ninety year old has had a chance to live a full life. Suppose, for the sake or argument, that these arguments worked: it would not in any way follow that it was OK to steal from the rich, or to kill the very old. It would not begin to follow.

Likewise, the view you attribute to me does not follow even from the claim that it's worse to cage primates than mice, still less from anything I actually said.

I oppose the freedom of people to make the bad choice of owning a nonhuman primate because it brings needless suffering to the animal, poses a public health hazard, and is usually not in the best interests of the owner.

I don't agree with the second two justifications. The way to deal with public health hazards is the same way we deal with the real threat of attacks by domesticated dogs and other animals. And I think the owners are best suited to determine their best interests, not you.

I would disagree that the decision to have kids never poses a health problem, and I would note that it is no harder to tell which parents would be dreadful parents than it is to tell which primate owners would be dreadful primate owners.

I think the bottom line here is the near absolute immorality of removing wild animals from their habitat for purposes of amusing humans, and many of the justifications you have brought up have made your argument weaker in my eyes, though perhaps stronger in the eyes of some who reject the near-absolute position.

I did not say that it was not dreadful, or even less dreadful, for other sorts of animals

Let me suggest a way to rewrite the sentence that would avoid my confusion on the point:

"This is really dreadful for animals".

Clear and concise.

Moreover, suppose I had said that it was worse to keep intelligent, social, emotionally complicated animals in cages than to keep unintelligent, solitary, emotionally uncomplicated ones in cages. This would not imply that it was OK to keep them there at all

Nor did my example imply that saying keeping a mentally handicapped person wrongly imprisoned is less immoral than keeping a genius wrongly imprisoned meant that one thought wrongful imprisonment was OK. I do not understand your point here.

Out of curiosity, how broadly or narrowly written is the bill? I could support most of what you're saying, but would be warry of a law so broadly written as to rule out, e.g., scientists who are studying primates and do know what they're doing (and at least sometimes raise the primates in their home, I believe.) On the other hand, I can imagine writing it narrowly would be difficult on e.g. equal protection grounds...

"A person is described in this paragraph, if the person—
(A) is licensed or registered, and inspected, by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service or any other Federal agency with respect to that species;
(B) is a State college, university, or agency, State-licensed wildlife rehabilitator, or State-licensed veterinarian;
(C) is an accredited wildlife sanctuary that cares for prohibited wildlife species and—
(i) is a corporation that is exempt from taxation under section 501 (a) of title 26 and described in sections 501(c)(3) and 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) of such title;
(ii) does not commercially trade in animals listed in section 3371 (g) of this title, including offspring, parts, and byproducts of such animals;
(iii) does not propagate animals listed in section 3371 (g) of this title; and
(iv) does not allow direct contact between the public and animals; or
(D) has custody of the animal solely for the purpose of expeditiously transporting the animal to a person described in this paragraph with respect to the species."

I always find it worrisome that so many people wish to ban what they disagree with. The funny thing is, these same people claim to pride themselves on being "open minded".

Your argument is flawed, and I am about to present the facts to clearly prove this.

Primates cannot be imported into the United States, so most all of the monkeys in private hands are captive born. They are not bringing in diseases if they are coming from animals already in the USA. There are many thousands of primates(15000 acording to you) living in private homes across the USA. If they were such a disease risk, we would be hearing about people getting terribly sick left and right. I keep 4 monkeys in my living room, and I have never gotten sick from them. The only way a captive born primate is going to get sick is if a human gives them a disease. These facts prove that the "public health argument" is not valid.

Next up is the idea that primates are physically dangerous to humans. Some primates can cause damage, like chimps and other apes. Very few people keep apes, and because they are indeed capable of injury, they should be highly restricted. There has never been an incidence of death caused by a monkey or lemur in the United States. Most monkeys that are commonly kept, such as squirrel monkeys, marmosets, etc, are not even able to cause mild injury. Capuchins and macaques could cause an injury, though not a life threatening injury. The fact that no deaths or critical injuries have occured ever by monkeys or lemurs invalidates the "primates are dangerous idea".

Next is the idea that monkeys arent suited for "pets". Most people who pay the 2-10 thousand dollars that a monkey or lemur costs, will make a good faith effort to protect their animal and money invested in it. Small monkeys do very well and seem very hapy in large cages, as long as they have a companion in the form of another monkey or human. Most people who keep monkeys keep more than one. It is simply the opinion of some that monkeys "should not be kept in captivity". This is OPINION, and you dont make laws based on opinion. If everyone tried to ban everything they disagreed with, homosexuality, tattoos, etc would be banned.

"I think the bottom line here is the near absolute immorality of removing wild animals from their habitat for purposes of amusing humans, and many of the justifications you have brought up have made your argument weaker in my eyes, though perhaps stronger in the eyes of some who reject the near-absolute position."

All of the primates in private hands today are produced from animals that are already in captivity. Many are several generations captive born. It is already highly illegal to import monkeys and lemurs from the wild. This new bill aims to keep people from selling, trading, or moving their own captive bred animals from one state to another, and as I pointed out the only justification is the opinion that "primates dont need to be pets". As if we need someone to tell us what we do and dont need to keep as pets. For those who have this opinion, the another person above asked a good question: why are intelligent animals in need of more protection than less intelligent animals(i.e., dogs and cats)?